And just a reminder everyone, that Deus Ex Human Revolution will be out on Friday 26th!

Topic: Glossary

Nerf

a short one today… “Nerf” is gamer slang for “made weaker”. It comes from the foam-toys and toy-gun range that fire foam darts, so the idea is that if you “nerf” something you’ve made it generally weaker and less of a threat.

So “my gun got nerfed” or “they nerfed my gun” or “my gun’s going to get nerfed” or “I hope they nerf your gun” are all common instance, but it can be broader than that. Not just affecting weapons but entire classes (“the shaman got nerfed, they nerfed healers”) or abilities.

Mostly you’ll see it apply to online communities where there’s constant balance shifts as the developers deserpately try to make game that both makes you feel like a badass and is fair across the board.

Reasons for nerfing: Mostly it tends to be to do with balance (such as in an online game) but can sometimes occur in single-player games if there was a particular item that essentially upset the balance of the game in question. Sometimes there’s particular instances were a particular combination of abilities or skills can create far overpowered effects that the developers either didn’t foresee or were missed in testing.

One example I can think of is some of the abilities in Infamous returning in Infamous 2. Things like the Frost Shield (formerly the kinetic shield) were changed. Previously you could run, jump and generally do everything while maintaining the shield but in the sequel it slowed Cole’s movement and peripheral vision. This was balanced by the fact that enemies tended to be less “a giant swarm all shooting at you” and moved around a lot more, meaning that the shield was required less in every instant and more for specific ones.